Yesterday, Louisiana Republicans added another notch to their “protective” victory belt when the state legislature passed a bill that will likely force the closing of three of its five abortion clinics. Similar laws have already been pushed through in Mississippi and Texas, Alabama is currently debating over its version, and Oklahoma’s bill is headed to the governor. Each of these states is basically cutting off women’s access to abortions by playing a little game with doctors’ hospital rights, stating that physicians who perform the procedure must have admitting privileges at hospitals within short distances (30 miles). These underhanded tactics by anti-abortion and pro-life groups are effectively employing their own abortion bans on the road to what they hope will be the “end of abortion.” Frighteningly, the south as a whole is getting a little too close to achieving that goal; as the article linked notes, if all these states limits go into effect, “…a woman in New Orleans would be nearly 300 miles from the nearest abortion clinic.”

Let’s talk the truth here. People who want to ban abortion in America are not protecting women. I am not a little girl, I don’t need you to save me from the big, bad doctor who will take away my baby. I am a grown, of age woman who makes her own decisions. I can drink. I can join the military and fight for my country. I can vote. But you want to save me from making decisions about my own body? You want me to drive to another state, or to go back to the age of back-room procedures, or sticking a hanger inside my body out of desperation, because you’ve forced all the clinics in my state to close? You’d rather see me dead from a botched, unsterile, or amateur abortion than for harm to come to a few cells hanging around my uterus? You’re giving us unnecessary “health and safety protections we deserve”?

Bullshit. Who the fuck do you think you’re kidding? You want to protect your beliefs, your morals, your code of conduct. You don’t give a damn about women. If I am forced to keep a baby I don’t want and/or cannot support, you aren’t going to pay for the rest of that child’s life — I am. You aren’t going to support him or me with the social services we may need. You aren’t going to provide our continued medical care. You aren’t going to feed him, clothe him, or take responsibility for him the rest of your lives — I am. And I am the one who should be making that decision. I am the one who will make that decision. I am the one who will protect myself. I am the one who will fight for my health and safety. I am the one who will not give up. You’d better hunker down for the fight of your life, because my body is my own.